Early in the Morning, 1963

James Rosenquist

oil on canvas, plastic

Rosenquist’s early experience as a billboard painter in Times Square shaped his approach to art. In his paintings, Rosenquist adopts ready-made images from magazines, packaging, ads, movies, and television. He fragments, enlarges, and rearranges them in unexpected, and unexpectedly thought-provoking, combinations. Each element of this composition—cloudy sky, sliced orange, pocket comb, and striding legs – evokes innumerable associations, yet the painting’s meaning remains elusive. Like a dream or a memory Rosenquist’s work challenges us to leave logic behind and enter into an odd and hallucinatory world.

James Rosenquist is an American artist and one of the protagonists in the pop-art movement.

From 1957 to 1960, he earned his living as a billboard painter. This was perfect training, as it turned out, for an artist about to explode onto the pop art scene. Rosenquist deftly applied sign-painting techniques to the large-scale paintings he began creating in 1960. Like other pop artists, Rosenquist adapted the visual language of advertising and pop culture (often funny, vulgar, and outrageous) to the context of fine art. Rosenquist achieved international acclaim in 1965 with the room-scale painting F-111. His specialty is taking fragmented, oddly disproportionate images and combining, overlapping, and putting them on canvases to create visual stories. This can leave viewers breathless, making them consider even the most familiar objects (a U-Haul trailer, or a box of Oxydol detergent, etc.) in more abstract and provocative ways.

This piece seems interesting with few non-matching objects and mood. cloudy sky, sliced orange, pocket comb, and striding legs don't match to each objects but the composition makes it work together. the comb is separating this piece to half but it doesn't look awkward. I do not know what it is but the piece seems its meaning something or advertising.